


Babooshka

by thecryptwriter



Category: Original Work
Genre: Drabble, Inspired by Music, Kate Bush, One-Shot, Original Character(s), Original work - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:08:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26018530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecryptwriter/pseuds/thecryptwriter
Summary: A story written for a university portfolio of mine that I decided to post here; a reworked story, inspired by Kate Bush's song 'Babooshka'. Please enjoy.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Babooshka

Will Jackson is perfect.

A model student, Captain of the school’s Rugby team - tall, blonde, and tan, with a voice that dropped way before any of ours did, and a face that looks like it’s carved by fucking Michelangelo or something.

You’d have thought he’d be an utter knob to balance some of it out, but the only scandal that’s ever surrounded him throughout his whole school career wasn’t even his fault; his tennis-playing girlfriend broke up with him right before the start of Sixth form when she moved away, leaving him heartbroken and, more importantly, available.

Nobody at all was surprised, then, when Will Jackson – handsome, humble Will Jackson- started talking to Katie.

Ben Davis, Vice Captain of the rugby team, had snatched Will’s phone up out of his hands and paraded around the boys’ changing rooms in his underpants, shouting, “Who’s KATIE?”. Will ran after him with a towel and his hand covering his balls, trying to get his precious commodity back. 

He’d been talking to her for around 4 weeks at that time.

She was eighteen, a brunette, curvy in all the places that guys my age go crazy for, but still toned from playing hockey. Ben tried to call her a lesbian for playing hockey, but then changed his mind, ‘cause lesbians only play football and rugby.

I pointed out that we were on the Rugby team, so does that makes us gay, and assured me that the same logic doesn’t apply to guys. According to the almighty mind of Ben Davis, ‘the queers’ are exclusively into theatre and Lady Gaga.

I’ve never liked his little pearls of wisdom much.

Whenever he started on one of his rants during P.E, Will and I used to escape by sitting under the sports field pavilion. He’d check his phone in case Katie had messaged, and we’d both have a drink out of our water bottles. His was black, with Nike branding – mine was always re-used from whatever soft drink I’d had that week, with the label picked off.

“That’s grim, mate,” Will would look up and say, especially when the leftover glue from the label made the bottle stick to my palm. “Why don’t you just get an actual water bottle? Save the planet, and all that.”

“I just don’t see the point spending twenty quid on a water bottle when I can just use one I’ve already got.”

“They don’t all cost twenty quid, and they don’t look half as gross as an old plastic one does.” He’d reason.

When we weren’t arguing about that, I’d check my phone and he’d sometimes ask me who I was texting – he’d always get distracted by a notification from Katie before I could answer him, though.

God, he gushed over her.  
I don’t blame him either. She was perfect for him; she had the capacity to give him all he needed.

Katie was funny, self-confident and assertive – she liked his attention, but not enough to oppose him hanging out with his mates on Xbox every evening.

The only downside was that she went to an all girls’ Catholic school in the city that had pretty strict rules about boys being allowed on the premises… but even that had its merits – namely, the uniform, and the separation from boys causing her to constantly be horny enough to exchange nudes no matter the time of day.

“She just gets it,” He’d say. “She gets me. It’s almost like she’s got a guy’s mind with a girl’s body, you know?”

He didn’t even have to work that much for how good she was to him. All he had to do was open up his inbox, and there she was, with a bubbly ‘Hey!’ and a string of pink heart emojis. He could tell her anything.

Stuff he’d never dream of saying to his team.  
Stuff he wouldn’t even say to me, as hard as I tried to get him to talk… and I was supposed to be his best friend.

I was almost a little jealous of how much he told her.

Katie loved him. Katie was his ideal girl. She wanted to make him happy, and he wanted everyone else to be as happy as he was. Will always told me how I’d find someone just like Katie, if I tried a little harder to talk to girls.

One time, he tried to set me up with Jennie, from the tennis team at a house party. She was nice enough to look at, I suppose – redhead, slim, perky… but her laugh was way too grating, and all she wanted to talk about was tennis, her pet dog, or The Vampire Diaries. She kept nagging me for being on my phone and not listening to her, but what else was I supposed to do?

I was bored out of my mind in her company, and it wasn’t like Will knew enough to come over and save me.

He was drunk, bent over the toilet seat in the bathroom, pouring out his heart to Katie how badly he wanted to be with her instead of there, with all of us.

With me.

It was like that for a while… just the two of them, totally in love.

That was good enough for him, and good enough for me… but recently, Will’s started to care about insignificant shit. You know, the little details that assholes like Ben Davis just have to keep pointing out. 

Like, why after five months of dating, he still hasn’t ever seen Katie in person, or even on a video call. How the reverse image search of every picture she’d sent him brings up a link to a schoolgirl fetish porn site.

Or, how there isn’t, and never has been, an all girls’ Catholic school in our city.

He sat down with me again at the pavilion today.

“I’m gonna message her tonight.” He stated.

“Why?” I kept my eyes to the floor when he turned to look at me, in complete puzzlement.

“What do you mean, why? Doesn’t this all seem a little off to you?” He asked. “I mean, why would she not want to see me? It’s been five months, and it’s not like she lives far. Even if she isn’t a total catfish, it means something else is up.”

“But she said herself – her school don’t allow boys on site.”

“Her school doesn’t even exist, dude! SHE might not even exist. What, you don’t think I have a right to know if she’s lying to me? What if I’m talking to a creep, Dan?”

“Well… it’s just - let’s say she IS lying. There’s still a person under that, who you’ve been talking to this whole time… and it’s someone who really gets you. You said so yourself,” I tried to keep the panic out of my voice. “You love her, don’t you? So why do you want to risk losing her and make her angry?”

“What about this don’t you get? She might not be Katie.”

“But even if she isn’t – she- whoever it is- they just want to make you happy! They want to be all yours. You mean that you wouldn’t love them, just because they don’t look how you thought? It’s still the same feelings, Will. Everything they said would still mean something, wouldn’t it?”

He looked at me like I was off my head.

“Look. Dan. I love KATIE. I want Katie, and if whoever I’m speaking to isn’t her, then to be honest I don’t really give a shit how they feel.”

I tried to convince him. I really tried to.  
I told him he’d regret it, that he shouldn’t, but…

He’d already made up his mind.

I could feel my pulse, pounding in my ears. I could barely speak to him for the rest of the school day, because I was just… so fucking angry.

How dare he. After all I’d done for him, after how hard I’d tried to make him feel loved… after everything we’d shared, how fucking DARE he treat me like that?

Sure, I was using her name, and her face, but everything she said to him, those were MY words! Those were my thoughts, and my feelings! I have the capacity to give him EVERYTHING he needs, but he only wants it when it’s from HER!

He can’t just blow my world apart, and not even THINK of me!

It was almost perfect, Will.  
We could have been so perfect together.  
Why’d you have to go and ruin it? I was going to tell you, eventually, I just… had to test your loyalty first. Clearly I couldn’t have made a worse move. 

I’m sitting at my laptop right now, with my phone on the desk beside me. In faded grey letters of Katie’s inbox, it reads:

Will is typing …

He’s been typing for about ten minutes now, probably working out what to say in the message that’s sealing my fate.

That’s alright.  
He can take as much time as he likes – I’m busy typing this up, anyway.

Let it state for the record that I, Daniel Barnes, fooled my best friend Will Jackson into thinking I was a girl in order to date him. There. I’m admitting to it.

Not because I regret it. Not because I did anything wrong.  
I’m admitting to it because that way when he shows his little text confrontation to all his friends, and proves that Katie was a fake all along, it won’t hold any punch.

Think of this as my confession if you want to. Or, think of it as my note.

It’s not like I’ll ever be able to set foot in that school again once he’s exposed me to everyone else.

Just picture the kind of abuse I’ll get from people like Ben. He already shoves people’s heads down toilets, and trips everyone he thinks is a fag over in the dining hall. If he finds out what I’VE done, there’ll be no mercy… and I won’t have the shield of Will’s friendship to protect me from it, because like he said – he doesn’t care how I feel if I’m not Katie.

I’m not perfect enough for him. I’m realising that for my whole life… the whole time I’ve been close to him…I never was – he only wanted my feelings when they were coming from someone else.

Still, that doesn’t mean I’m going down without a fight. There’s a couple of things I can do for a little revenge.  
While I’m waiting for him to get his shit together, my phone’s hooked up to my laptop by a USB cable, and I’m copying a few photos over.

Perfect Will Jackson. Handsome, humble Will Jackson.

Model student, Captain of the school’s Rugby team, with a spotless record… I wonder how it’s going to look for your career aspirations when a quick search of your name on Google leads to 150 photos of you with your cock out, plastered onto every social media site?

I had a LOT of fun with those, by the way, Will.

Now the whole of the internet will get to see them, too… and your parents. And your friends. And every university you apply to, every job that decides to look you up to vet you properly. With any luck, your future girlfriends will see them everywhere too, and realise what a sleazy bastard you are before dumping you.

Good luck trying to take them all down. No matter how hard you try, how many times you report them, they’ll be lurking around in the crevices of every search engine for a long, long time.

Maybe next time you’ll think before breaking the heart of a girl you send private pictures to, huh?

…the message has just come through.  
I guess I’d better go and answer.

Can’t keep my loving boyfriend waiting when there’s so much to talk about, now, can I?

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed! Constructive critiques are welcome, but be gentle. This has already been assessed by my tutors, and it's my first ever post. :)


End file.
